{"id":14909,"date":"2011-04-14T09:08:01","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T14:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=14909"},"modified":"2011-04-14T09:08:01","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T14:08:01","slug":"mlb-betting-minnesota-twins-at-tampa-bay-rays-picks-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/mlb-betting-minnesota-twins-at-tampa-bay-rays-picks-predictions-14909\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Betting: Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays Picks & Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Twins and Tampa Bay Rays are both struggling on offense in the early going this season and match-up for a three-game series starting today<\/p>\n

Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Tampa Bay Rays are looking for their first home win of the season Thursday night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Minnesota was unable to capture a two-game sweep from the Kansas City Royals in dropping a 10-5 home contest Wednesday.\u00a0 It\u2019s too early for the Twins to panic, but yesterday\u2019s starting pitcher Francisco Liriano fell to 0-3 with a 9.42 ERA after the loss.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s the third game of the season,\u201d he commented.\u00a0 \u201cEverything\u2019s good.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to get frustrated.\u201d\u00a0 The offense is slowly starting to turn things around after averaging 2.6 runs per game while starting 3-5 on the season, as it has combined for 23 hits and plating seven runs on Sunday and Tuesday.\u00a0 Minnesota is 14-15 the last three years after allowing 10 runs or more.<\/p>\n

Twins starting pitcher Carl Pavano is coming off a bounceback win against the Athletics and is currently 1-1 with a 6.00 ERA in two starts.\u00a0 Last year, the right-hander went 0-1 with a 4.38 ERA in two outings against Tampa Bay.\u00a0 Pavano has tallied a winning 5-4 record and 3.84 ERA in 12 career starts against the Rays, allowing hitters to hit for a combined .265 average.\u00a0 The veteran starter is 24-23 with a 4.24 ERA in 68 career appearances (63 starts) indoors.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay lost six straight games to start the season, but won back-to-back games against the Red Sox before Wednesday\u2019s contest at Fenway Park was rained out.\u00a0 Last year, the Rays took five of eight from Minnesota, including a split at The Trop from August 2-5.\u00a0 The Rays have scored 39 runs on the season (3.55 runs per game), but 16 of those runs came in Monday\u2019s 16-5 victory.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re seeing some progress right now and I feel good about that,\u201d said manager Joe Maddon.\u00a0 \u201cWe got some really good pitching and finally some timely hitting is showing up.\u201d\u00a0 Tampa Bay is 1-7 versus right-handed starters this year and 0-5 in games played on artificial turf.<\/p>\n

Rays starting pitcher James Shields is 0-1 with a 4.73 ERA in two starts this season, surrendering three home runs in 13.1 innings of work.\u00a0 The right-hander picked up a no-decision in his last outing, leading the club to a 9-7 road win over the Chicago White Sox, giving up five runs and eight hits in six frames.\u00a0 Shields gave up four runs in six innings in his only 2010 outing against Minnesota.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m ready to go tomorrow,\u201d Shields said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd we\u2019ll start that series off right.\u201d\u00a0 He has recorded a 3-1 record and 5.27 ERA in seven starts against the Twins, allowing hitters to hit a lofty .320 in the process.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Twins due to their 6-2 mark against losing teams with Pavano on the mound, while the Rays are 1-11 in their last 12 home games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Twins and Tampa Bay Rays are both struggling on offense in the early going this season and match-up for a three-game series starting today Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays Minnesota was unable to capture a two-game sweep from the Kansas City Royals in dropping a 10-5 home contest Wednesday.\u00a0 It\u2019s too early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[2004,86,240,150],"class_list":["post-14909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-carl-pavano","tag-james-shields","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14909"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14911,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions\/14911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}